It’s always nice to start with a bit of an adventure but because Japan is what it is adventures are not easy. All I can point to is Kay and I getting mixed up in the 12 floors of the Ginza Uni Qlo which ended up with me waiting 20 minutes on floor 6 (children and babies) while Kay was outside the front door. It appears we both checked out where the other was at exactly the same time and we must have crossed paths on the escalators. Exciting stuff huh.
I am sure that those of you who have been to Japan will understand. I suspect you would have to do something rather stupid to get into trouble here and that is not because it is especially tolerant. It’s just that everything is done in its locally correct way and it’s generally obvious, so to cause trouble would require a fair degree of non-thought. A friend of mine came on a representative rugby trip here many years ago and he succeeded by hitting a policeman, and some people I know who were involved with importing cars also have a few tales of interest. But Kay and I have just buzzed along on various types of trains, mostly Shinkansen speedy ones, with our upper class JR Pass and done the sights in six cities and in a few small daytrip places. The most interesting thing by far is watching how people behave and that is the really different part of being in Japan.
The moment you get on your first public transport you know Japanese are unlike any other nationalities. There are signs saying no talking on your mobile and no excessive noise and they are eerily quiet. We spent many hours on trains and metros and only two people were naughty – one was a smart alec youth (a rare variety and it was an obscure local line) and the other was an Indian tourist doing what comes naturally until his wife saw the silent reaction and gave him a quick word.
Everyone is polite and obeys the rules. My biggest problem was with pedestrian crossings which usually have a light to tell you what to do even if if it is a little one way street. People stand there waiting a long time when there isn’t a vehicle in sight. After a couple of days I decided if no one was looking I would be bad and sneak across, and eventually we both did but not when there was a group around us. This morning on the way to breakfast we had a red light on a side road two steps wide and I looked about, only a young women by me, so I went and she followed giving me a nice smile of complicity. All footpaths and public passageways are politically correct with tiles about a foot wide with four groves along them presumably for blind people. If you have funny ankles or feet like my wife or high heels these are very annoying, especially when the three blind people we have seen did not use them. However when you get to the next pedestrian crossing and it’s eventually your turn you can be soothed by the electronic warning noise emitting “Coming Through The Rye” or something equally Japanese.
Everyone is unfailingly considerate which is a very good thing for a tourist. Stupid questions are dealt with without any problems. Railway attendants bow on entering and leaving a carriage. Getting out of a shop after buying something is a major exercise of thankyous and more bowing. Walking past a heavily manned hotel reception desk only requires several bows and thankfully nothing else. I dropped a coin worth about a dollar on a metro one day and was chased down the concourse when I got off by a guy returning it to me, and I am pretty sure it was not his stop. The traffic is so well behaved it is unbelievable. We have seen two instances where a motorist has been wronged by another and the reaction has been a polite toot, in one case where a motorcyclist nearly had his water severed it was a longish polite toot. And where is all the litter and graffiti? Dunno, we haven’t seen any. Apparently you take your rubbish home because there are very few rubbish tins. I saw a Tripadvisor review by an Indian guy who had some takeaways in his room and asked reception if someone could collect the containers. They told him to take them home with him when he left, and in his review he wondered how he was supposed to do that when he lived in Delhi. There is no tipping and you can drink the water. When it’s raining, as it did regularly, there are heaps of umbrellas outside commercial places and you just help yourself if necessary. Well we think that is the deal.
What more can you want?
It’s all quite wonderful and civically marvellous, but also unnerving. What happens when they let loose as eventually they must. Or is that not allowed either?
We have been to Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Kagoshima, Osaka and back to Tokyo, and the following comments only relate to where we have been. Apart from Kyoto all the cities look much the same apart from scale, and a bit like the clothes people wear there is very little colour. I have seen two houses that weren’t in the white to grey spectrum. There is no countryside as we know it, as all flat land is built on or there are a few rice paddies. Haven’t seen one agricultural animal. If the land isn’t flat it’s forested and that’s it, no wonder Japanese tourists are besotted with sheep.
One has to view the sights and we have done our bit. Kay liked a canal in Tokyo lined by cherry blossoms plus all the young ladies in Kyoto wearing kimonos and uncomfortable wooden sandals. We had our only guide there and she explained it’s a bit of a thing for tourists to do and you get discounts as well as approving comments from locals. I particularly liked the view of a thermal beach near Kagoshima where one puts on a robe and lies in a depression dug in the hot sand and then is covered with shovels full of hot sand . The shovellers make sure everyone is in neat rows and a small colourful umbrella is placed to shade your face. I don’t know what happens if your nose gets itchy. Apparently it’s very good for your health and losing weight. Presumably for the latter to work you stay a lot longer than half an hour. The atomic bomb places in Hiroshima were a weighty experience and I was fascinated by the English translations of the information in the museum. The wording of matters related to why the Ennola Gay dropped the object was very careful to be non judgemental but it also was a bit too careful I thought. One would never have found out how the war started if that was the only information available. There was a book for comments and my comment was “You reap what you sow”.
The traditional gardens are interesting. I always thought those pine trees that have each branch carefully shaped were an individual species that just did that. However I now know the lovely tidy look is all hard and detailed work akin to tree torturing. And all that smooth moss is also the result of a lot of work. Our guide said she did a little pruning herself on a tree in her courtyard, but when the expensive professional torturer was called in later she was castigated for her amateurish attempt. One could spend all day every day visiting temples but we forced ourselves to a limit of about three a week. There are Shinto and Buddhist ones which means people have two religions to deal with and they seem to have a bewildering amount of superstitions to navigate around. I am always keen to see the economics of religions and the temples here are hard out to take your money off you. Of course you get something in return, usually a promise of godly consideration of your request which is often written on a bit of purchased wood or shaped paper. One in English said “Please can Alice have an easy birth and Mr Trump get seriously ill.”.
Travelling by rail has been a breeze and very comfortable in Green class where the only unseemly behaviour is from tourists who need lessons about child control and that happened once. Getting money out of machines has been easy because Lonely Planet told me to use 7 Eleven ATMs. Tripadvisor “near you” revealed a couple of excellent and different restaurants and I have never been to another place where there are so many available clean and technically fascinating toilets. One of our daytrips was to a town where pottery has been made for centuries and we bought a couple of examples, however we passed on the small and very nice bowls that cost over $20,000. I couldn’t see the difference between them and the ones with less digits on the tag and I find my ignorance annoying so some homework is required. I felt better equipped when we went to a place that had twelve sake breweries and with enthusiasm I set about my homework on the spot (without guidance) and had fun finding the subtle differences. Kay enjoyed the sparkling ones so we sometimes had a glass of that before going out to dinner. It became quickly obvious that a full tasting at each of the twelve places would leave Kay with a problem called Dennis so I moved to tasting the best only and we retired after seven.
We haven’t had a bad meal and that includes the sort of place where you select your meal on a screen and pay through a slot before going in. My only concern was some very slippery stuff that was unidentifiable but didn’t hurt. I guess my liking for chillies and garlic have made me a bit insensitive to subtle flavours so sometimes I would have liked a little stronger taste. I also had some of the best oysters ever. And thank goodness for pictures on menus and those amazing replica food plates. However I did discover that trying to order one thing from a set of multiple plates was a definite breaking of the rules and not at all possible.
One cannot leave commenting on Japan without mentioning the very small hotel rooms. We had one where we saw a fellow guest take his non top opening case out into the corridor to open it. But the really fascinating thing was how small a functioning bathroom can be and what can be achieved is impressive.
I wanted Kay to be the Shopping Correspondent but she has declined so I will briefly comment. There’s lots of really good fashion stuff for women and men as well as some beautiful craft stuff, but you need a second mortgage. Diligently exploring lesser streets and funny downstairs places can have positive and financially acceptable results, and we have managed to accumulate a few things. To the extent that another bag is required so we have been looking for a stripey Chinese one but if there are any here I haven’t seen them. So we now have another bag that locals would say is cheap, and it came from a discount shop called Don.k. Watch out for Kay wearing some slightly oriental gear.
My first thought for a conclusion was along the lines of all this conformity and sameness needs a bomb under it to liven things up. But that is probably historically inappropriate given what happened in 1945 and more recently with nuclear reactors and devastating tsunamis. So let’s just say from a tourist’s perspective this is a country for people who want to see something different but not have too many travelling problems, and we will be back next year to have a look at the northern areas.
Sayonara.
Dennis.